What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks? • Hacker News Board

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#551

Post by raxxorrax » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 8:38 AM UTC

cbdumas wrote: post #314

All of this talk about supply chain issues are totally missing the point in my opinion. So many articles (and tweet chains I guess) have been written about supply chain issues, yet every one of them seems to ignore the elephant in the room which is demand for goods vs services. Over the course of the pandemic there was a staggering re-balancing of consumer spending [0] from services to goods, to which supply chains h…

There is also a phenomenon similar to (inverse) traffic jams where a bottleneck wanders up the supply chain. Just in time delivery has some disadvantages and we basically use the road (or rail, sea) as warehouse nowadays. But ships, trains and trucks might not get filled when production halted because of lacking parts. Still the trucks and ships are bound to their current job and are sitting empty somewhere. It will slowly entangle as transport priority gets reordered.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#552

Post by yxhuvud » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 8:39 AM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #517

starky wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raw materials are seeing issues, which is trickling down to nearly everything. Metal costs have gone up >25% from what I've seen, plastics are nearly impossible to get from the large suppliers, etc. Many electronics components are majorly supply constrained right now, is isn't just silicon components, passives also have shortages everywhere.

Cash bids on corn are up ~70% from last year. The production figures do not suggest to me that the supply is constrained on the production side to justify a jump that large. Especially when we're seeing large increases across all kinds of commodities in unison, suggesting there is something else going on. Are people currently holding onto such resources as a hedge against inflation or what may be driving it?

Corn prices could be driven by the shortage of fertilizer for next year.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#553

Post by erikbye » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 8:42 AM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #462

InitialLastName wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re. paper towels: strictly non-essential items, yes, but it takes some lifestyle reconfiguration to make the alternatives work. My household is (I speculate asymptotically) approaching zero paper towel use, but we have ready access to laundry, the capital and bandwidth to have built up a comfortable supply of rags and towels, and our only occasionally messy coinhabitant is the cat (and you can bet that if he vomits,…

The whole point of paper towels, or disposable nappies, is removing the labour cost of cleaning them. My ex-wife was a stay at home Mom for her religious reasons, and was determined to be the "best" Mom, only healthy food, no TV or devices, cloth nappies etc. Once we hit kid #3, the time needed to launder cloth nappies wasn't viable with two other kids on the go. I encouraged her to give disposables a go, and she was…

> I'm reminded of the old sarcastic comment that "Linux is free, if your time has no value".

Wow, a thread about supply chains and you manage to take a cheap jab at Linux. In response, try running Windows on a computer you only use once a month. You can watch it update every time instead of getting work done. Linux you can update while working.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#554

Post by erispoe » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 8:44 AM UTC

cbdumas wrote: post #314

All of this talk about supply chain issues are totally missing the point in my opinion. So many articles (and tweet chains I guess) have been written about supply chain issues, yet every one of them seems to ignore the elephant in the room which is demand for goods vs services. Over the course of the pandemic there was a staggering re-balancing of consumer spending [0] from services to goods, to which supply chains h…

The same rebalancing happened in Europe, and Europe doesn't have close to the issues the US has regarding supply chain. Europe's major ports are automated and operate 24/7, port to hinterland relies much more on rail than trucking. Overall, the US supply chain was already very fragile and outdated.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#555

Post by blitzar » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 8:50 AM UTC

habosa wrote: post #529

He lost me when he turned the thread into a plea to not raise his future taxes: https://mobile.twitter.com/typesfast/status/1453753943092125... We need billionaires like him! Not the other kind! /s

The only thing that can protect you from a bad guy with a billion dollars is a good guy with a billion dollars.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#556

Post by simonh » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 8:55 AM UTC

SkittyDog wrote: post #217

simonh wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liquidity is a service customers pay for. It’s not clear to me that’s unproductive work. More efficiently allocating capital can absolutely improve productivity. Some activities classed as renty can be economically beneficial. It’s not all pure usury, but activities that seek to increase rent revenue without increasing the value provided are a problem and that’s the ‘rent seeking’ part. I’ve no problem with fair valu…

I'm not arguing whether the definition is valid, just correcting the previous poster's misuse of some well-established economics jargon. Re: Liquidity... The fact that a service is immediately useful to somebody (and has a willing customer) does not prove that it's a net productive behavior for the society, as a whole. That's just how the field of economics defines it, and the practioners widely agree that "providing…

Car hire companies are built on a renting business model, but I don't hate Avis. I don't curse every time I need to hire a skip at the evils of the skip hire company. What am I going to do, buy a skip? Start a local skip share collective? As long as the 'landlord' or owner is improving the efficient allocation or utilisation of resources there really isn't a problem.

The real issue is when owners seek benefits of ownership that are not correlated with efficiency or productivity. For example grants and subsidies, inflation of rents though monopolistic practices or opportunism. In fact all monopolistic profit inflation is renty in a way, regardless of what the business model is, because it's extracting extra profits from simply exercising control of something in excess of the economic value provided. It's exercising the power of incumbency that's the problem.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#557

Post by blitzar » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 8:56 AM UTC

dkokelley wrote: post #330

chrisan wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the "RAM" if not inventory?

Production and logistics capacity. If you run a factory at 100% efficiency, anytime >100% throughput is necessary you get backlogged. If you have ~15% headroom as a GOAL, you can weather a shock without any downstream impact. In the case of the Port of LA shipping containers, optimizing lot storage so that you always have exactly enough space (100% efficiency) breaks down as soon as that space requirement jumps to 11…

> breaks down as soon as that space requirement jumps to 110%.

It breaks down at 100.0001%. At 110% the butterflys wings are flapping and creating storms on the other side of the planet.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#558

Post by lucumo » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 8:56 AM UTC

erikbye wrote: post #553

EdwardDiego wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of paper towels, or disposable nappies, is removing the labour cost of cleaning them. My ex-wife was a stay at home Mom for her religious reasons, and was determined to be the "best" Mom, only healthy food, no TV or devices, cloth nappies etc. Once we hit kid #3, the time needed to launder cloth nappies wasn't viable with two other kids on the go. I encouraged her to give disposables a go, and she was…

> I'm reminded of the old sarcastic comment that "Linux is free, if your time has no value". Wow, a thread about supply chains and you manage to take a cheap jab at Linux. In response, try running Windows on a computer you only use once a month. You can watch it update every time instead of getting work done. Linux you can update while working.

Once a month? No. I hardly even reboot my Windows machine once a month...

Only the major releases of Windows 10 need a stop the world reboot. Those happen once every six months. And it's usually only a few minutes.

That's for a home machine. I've seen some enterprise machines take forever. I have no idea how they managed to fuck that up, but it's on the IT organisation of those enterprises, not on Windows.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#559

Post by blitzar » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:02 AM UTC

throwaway984393 wrote: post #485

Of course there's no cash on the balance sheet. If you leave it on, your competitor won't. I don't know why people continue to believe there's an invisible economist in the sky making sure that your economy will always be healthy as long as the market can do whatever it wants. Or, perhaps we're just looking at it the wrong way. Nature has epidemics, hurricanes, droughts, forest fires. Maybe a recession every 20 years…

There is no punishment for having zero cash on the balance sheet only penalty, even in a crisis.

I would love to see the corporate equivalent of a pandemic, let the weak die off and the strong continue on. Sadly that isnt what happens. The weak become zombies, propped up by government money out of fear of the weak being killed off.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#560

Post by drumhead » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:08 AM UTC

I'd say he was mostly correct about the causes, but the thing to remember is that this situation is not going to be with us forever. It's going to last a year maybe two at most and then after that it's business as usual, the companies that have the least spare capacity will win out again and everyone will forget the post covid supply chain issues. So no I don't don't think we'll see much more investment in excess capacity. What it has highlighted however is the over reliance on certain geographical locations for manufacturing, especially key electronics components and the problems it caused. Expect certain items to be manufactured closer to key markets now or to be branded strategically important so that government aid can be provided to them to keep them going.